This might seem really superficial, but the main reason I probably won't get this PSU is because the 24-pin ATX connector on the PSU side isn't compatible with the 24-pin cable on the X-650. When I first heard of the Platinum Series I was intent on getting one due to the longer 8-pin EPS cable (the motherboard tray on my V2120X is too long for my current one to be routed behind). This is important to me because I'm in the process of sleeving all my cables with MDPC-X for the purpose of aesthetics.

Other than that, this PSU is amazing. Seasonic consistently delivers the very best power supplies in every wattage class, and even their budget offerings outshine the competition. Will the ultra high energy efficiency recover the extra cost over time? Probably not. Almost certainly not. But at least you know you're doing the environment a slight favor and can be quite confident that your components won't be fried by a faulty PSU.Reply

If you're happy with the x-650 and you don't need there extra power then there is probably no good reason to upgrade at that cost.

But.....

If you're going to all the trouble to individually sleeve the cables then "length of cables" isn't all that compelling of an excuse not to upgrade (if that's you're only reason). It's a very small additional investment in time and $$ to buy a crimper, some new atx pins, and a roll of 18 or 20 gauge wire and make new cables any length you need. It even makes sleeving easier since you don't have to get the sleeve over the connector pin (you can crimp it on after you get the sleeve on the wire). It would also let you get away with 1/16 sleeving instead of the usual 1/8.

I have an older Seasonic (can't remember which model), but it is an awesome power supply. I live in a heavily wooded area and often on windy days the trees hitting the power lines will cause the lights to flicker, sometimes my monitor to power cycle, but through it all my computer will stay on and working due to the excellent properties of the Seasonic. I, too, will keep buying what I consider to be the best brand in power supplies these days.

Good to hear their current products are even better than the older model I use.

Same here. The other day we had a power glitch and the light went out for a fraction of a second. I went over to my big system to see if it would reboot cleanly (it's also a file server) but it was still running. Nice! It uses an X750 Gold.Reply

That won't be simple. The ouput cables are parallel-connected to 12V which means the current usually gets shared. But it might happen that a high current will flow through a single cable when resistance is low enough. E.g. an unwanted bridge between two pins.

This is no short circuit since there are enough resistors (or components with resistance) between the voltage source (secondary winding) and the output. SCP doesn't work.

This is no over power since resistance is low enough that you don't need much work (voltage) to transport load carrier. Voltage will be much lower. Power is the product of voltage and current which means the total power might be below the settings for OPP, even if current is high. OPP doesn't elese.Reply

Yes, I missed that. Actually the Seasonic site is equally skimpy on this little detail as well.

It would be a really good idea if Anandtech provided a spec sheet of sorts for the reviewed products so that they could be glanced for basic info. This particular review saves a lot more than that, which in the case of a "Best PSU Ever" and a Gold award, it is certainly lacking.

I searched for "guaranty" on all pages before posting. I should have searched for "warranty". Being an Iranian I always thought that they are the same, but it looks like they are the same at the same time that they are not (i.e. You take the manufacturer to court for "guaranty", and reseller or distributor for "warranty"):

Seasonic always makes extremely good PSU and they haven't disappoint this time eitherI own an X-560. Before I bought Seasonic I was with Enemax.someone need to convince me really hard not to buy from Seasonic againReply

Own one for 1 about month and a half. It was a (pricey) no brainer since I wanted spare power (my current sistem uses less than 400W in full load but it will be upgraded from time to time), efficiency & absolute silence. The Super Flower based alternatives were nowhere to be found in my country (Romania).

Many thanks for an excellent review, the technical details is what keeps bringing me back to AnandTech.

I'm currently using a Seasonic SS460-FL myself, the 460W X-Series fanless model, and it's been all but perfect. The only issue is what I'd consider the high electrical noise, something the unit shared with the M12 2 800W model it replaced, but it's tolerable in a suitably isolated case.

Before I scare anyone off by that comment I should note that I'm extremely picky about noise, to the point that I'm running the two 140m fans on my CPU cooler (a Noctua NH-C14) at 750RPM because anything above that is too loud to my taste.

Like many other posters here I will continue buying Seasonic PSUs for the foreseeable future due to their impeccable quality and performance. Skimping on what's essentially the heart and circulatory system of your computer always struck me as ill-advised.Reply

Some fanless PSUs had a noisy PFC choke, the source might be magnetostriction. Often a magnetic field is not constant because current changes or other inductivities trouble the choke. This deforms the materials and makes such noises.

Since there is no fan noise you can hear the electrical noise much better. In truth the electrical noises are at the same level as always.Reply

You say that this 860W model is the best PSU SeaSonic has to offer, but what about the 1000W unit SS-1000XP released in Q4-2011? I thought it is actually the same PSU with higher ratings?! It even has the 80 PLUS Platinum label and also has exceptionally good efficiency over a wide range of loads well above 90% from 20% load to 100% load. I think it should at least get mentioned in the article. The Gold-units from SeaSonic you are referring to were released in 2010 i think.Besides that thanks for this very good article, its always a pleasure reading anadtech.Reply

While this is a great power supply it's hard to argue that it is superior to its 1000W big brother which (I believe) matches this one in all the efficiency, regulation, and noise benchmarks and adds another 140W.

The only way I can see you claiming this one is better is maybe a price/W metric or whenever you wrote this article you weren't aware of the 1000W version. Reply

How about some pictures of the cables please. These things are important to many of us as we like to see what they look like for case work arounds asthetics, what type of ribbons their using or sleeving etc.

I've got a SS 620W Bronze running an older now-backup gaming rig and it's been flawless for over two years (overclocked E8400, SLI'd o/c GTX 275s). However, the reviews of the 1000W version of this PS on NewEgg are a little disconcerting with a 25% failure/DOA rate - especially at this level of supposed quality (and price).Reply

Yup. I'd really like one of these, but find it hard to justify the big price jump to get to platinum efficiency. You can get all the PSU you need (Corsair GS800) for $115. It is nice, though. I'm still running a Corsair TX650 which I bought 5 years ago for $90 or so.Reply

Most seasonics have NO noise under about half load. Why is this one noisy? Also what's with the "electrical noise". I don't wanna hear a damn thing. "Best power supply ever", psh, not if I can hear it.Reply

It is hard to take much stock from your review. Especially when you write a garbage conclusion that claims Super Flower products a bad product because of their name. The last Super Flower manufactured PSU reviewed on Anandtech was 10/16/2008 by Christoph Katzer. Also, your testing equipment and methodology is not listed in this article. For all we, as readers, know, you could be using a kill-a-watt and a RadioShack multimeter. You should also list your error tolerance for your readings, no matter what equipment you are using. When I read this article, I thought I might have mistakenly been redirected to Tom's for a moment.

I'm sure reviewers such as yourself all have opinions and incentives to write nice reviews for the generous companies who give you free, expensive toys to play with. However, you should let your test results do the talking and provide some of the basic information, such as methodology, just like we all learned in 5th grade science class, so that you can be much more credible. This isn't the worst PSU review I've seen from a major tech site (Tom's has that locked down tight), but I certainly expect more from Anandtech.

I would really like to see some real world usage testing. Clearly every uses computers in a different manner and I am not sure the best way to go about it.

Much like you have a very standardized testing bed for computer cases. It would be nice to have some measure of power usage over a certain period of time.

Using the same computer setup run the system for two hours at idle speed measuring power usage. Then two hours looping some gaming type benchmark. Then two hours of scripted web browsing. Then an hour fully loading the CPU with prime. Then maybe two hours of streaming media to a media player of some sort.

Then it would be nice to see how much power is saved between the units. It would be interesting to see where the mock breakeven point is power savings vs the added cost of these new pricey power supplies vs a gold or silver rated PSU.

This might be more of a feature article then something done for every PSU you review.Reply

What're you on about? Yes, Paul puts all the units in an incubutor for at least 8 hours. And you? Have you even explained your test methodology? You aren't making any sense and aren't fooling anybody with little SMPS knowledge.

If you look at Oklahoma Wolf's results, you can find the same. The Golden King 1000 (which you labeled as a joke just because of it's name) usually has lower ripple, better transient response, better cooling and sells for cheaper. The only thing the SeaSonic has over it is better regulation.

It's clear that either you're unknowledgeable or you have a personal agenda, with the latter making more sense. Excuse my bluntness, but you're diviving into pure nonsense.Reply

"The direct competitors include the already mentioned Enermax Platimax 750W / Platimax 850W and the Golden King Platinum design (Kingwin LZP-750) from Super Flower. The latter offering isn't just questionable in name, but the missing overcurrent protection and MOV are also a major drawback. As such, we wouldn't put that particular unit in the same category as the Seasonic; Super Flower products in general use cheaper quality."

It was a reasonably good article tarnished by the reviewer's obvious hate for anything not Seasonic.

There is no taking away from Seasonic at putting out a kickass power supply. I like them so much I bought one myself and it is currently powering the system I am writing this on. But to unilaterally state something like "Super Flower products in general use cheaper quality." without posting quantitative data to back it up or "The latter offering isn't just questionable in name, but the missing overcurrent protection and MOV are also a major drawback" without actually looking at the reasons why they are not included (and there is one if you bother to look). Are these actually required on a power supply with a single large 12v rail (OCP is definitely a must for mutiple 12v rails to keep a power hog on one of them from burning out the limited rail)? For what? Please expand on why this is such a major drawback?Reply

It is an excellent PSU. I replaced a Corsair HX850 with it (the Corsair was losing some of its regulation edge with age). So far I am really happy with its clean power delivery, tight regulation and efficiency (I hate waste).

The downside is that it is a costly beastie but that is to be expected. It is after all one of the best available (yes there are others just as good) in that wattage range. Quality costs.

While I would not call this review objective, the product itself does merit some of the author's excitement. I would look to jonnyguru.com for more technical and objective power supply reviews though.

It looks like Seasonic finally increased the length of the ATX12V/EPS12V cables a bit - but they're still too short!

For many/most case and motherboard layouts these days, those cables need to be able to reach from the bottom-mounted PSU around behind the MB, up to the very top edge of the MB. Even in some mid-size cases, 65cm isn't long enough! My Seasonic X750 had 55cm cables and I had to buy a 15cm extension for it with my Antec P280 case, and even then it was barely long enough. These cables really should be 75cm to cover most non-jumbo cases.Reply

Technically I'm talking about the 1kW version (SS-1000XP) and can't comment on the 860W version but it seems that the fanless mode is a complete lie. My PC has an i7 3770T (45W TDP) plus an SSD and an optical drive. I haven't measured it yet but even under full load I doubt it hits 100W. And yet its now idling in 22 degC ambient and the PSU fan is spinning. Its definitely in Hybrid mode and if I flip the switch it gets louder. Its really, really quiet but all the specifications say it should be "fanless" and "0 rpm" up to 30% load. If I'd known that wasn't true I would have got the 460W fanless instead.Reply

Im way late to the party but can anyone answer which connectors are connected to which 12v rails? Because I think my unit keeps on tripping if I load the CPU and GPU and the OCN guys said I might be plugging all my components to all one 12v rail.Reply

Im way late to the party but can anyone answer which connectors are connected to which 12v rails? Because I think my unit keeps on tripping if I load the CPU and GPU and the OCN guys said I might be plugging all my components to all one 12v rail.Reply